Tim GideonSonos ZonePlayer S5The ZonePlayer S5 overcomes some of its deficiencies&mdash;like the lack of an iPod dock&mdash;and shines as a relatively affordable entry into the excellent, but expensive, Sonos wireless music streaming system.

Full access to Sonos wireless music streaming—for far less than any Sonos starter bundle. Fills a large room easily with no distortion. Clarity throughout entire frequency range. Controlled by free app for iPhone and iPod touch, as well as any Sonos remote.

Cons

Needs to be connected via Ethernet (unless you have another Sonos ZonePlayer). No charging dock for iPod. No power switch.

Bottom Line

The ZonePlayer S5 overcomes some of its deficiencies—like the lack of an iPod dock—and shines as a relatively affordable entry into the excellent, but expensive, Sonos wireless music streaming system.

With a minimum outlay of $1,000 for the necessary hardware, entering the realm of the Sonos home-audio system isn't an option for everyone. Enter the $399 (direct) Sonos ZonePlayer S5, a standalone speaker, which lets you stream music from your PC, access services like Pandora and Rhapsody, and use an iPhone or an iPod touch for its remote control. The S5 isn't perfectit would be nice to have an actual dock for your iPod, for instancebut its strengths outweigh the flaws. If you've been interested in the Sonos system, but haven't been able to afford it it, this product $400 gets you in the doorprovided you already have an iPod touch or iPhone.

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The ZonePlayer S5, which measures 8.5 by 14.4 by 4.8-inches (HWD), is white and non-descript, with a slightly curved metallic grille covering its array of five drivers. There's no internal or external subwoofer like you'll find on some iPod speaker systems, and, to reiterate, even though this looks a lot like an iPod speaker dockthere's no place to dock your iPod or iPhone. Since the S5 can stream your entire music library, which is likely either identical to or larger than your iPod's collection, this isn't a huge issue, but it would be nice to be able to listen to, say, a friend's iPod. The Sonos answer is a less-graceful 3.5mm Aux input on the back, along with an included cable to connect your player to the S5. Being able to charge your iPod/iPhone would be a good thing too, since using it as a remote can help drain your battery. Sonos has no solution for that.

The top panel of the S5 houses a Mute button and Volume controlsand that's it. There isn't even a Power button on the device. The back panel houses the aforementioned Aux input, as well as a 3.5 mm headphone jack, two Ethernet ports, and the connection for the power cable.

If you already have Sonos hardware, you can add the S5 to your set-up easily, and if you want the speakers but don't have an iPhone or iPod touch, you can buy the dedicated, touch-screen Sonos remote control. But at $349, it's more expensive than a 32GB iPod. So, it's safe to assume that this is an iPod touch/iPhone-owners-only device, unless you have other Sonos products. Of course, the included software can control the player, too, but that takes away from the being-away-from-your-computer music-streaming experience.

Easy Set-Up, Sweet Sound
Using the included software disc, setting Sonos up is a simple, guided process. Enable sharing on your computer (Mac OS 10.4 or later, Windows XP or later), click a few buttons, and you're good to go. The desktop controller application for your PC will load up your entire iTunes library, as well as any other music you want it to play. It can also access shared music from other PCs on your wireless network.

A word about how Sonos uses Wi-Fi, however: this is not a completely wire-free experience. First off, your computer needs to be connected via Ethernet cable to your router, which isn't ideal for those who want to carry a laptop around the housethat's the whole point of having a wireless router, isn't it? Adding to the letdown, at least one Sonos Zone Player needs to be connected to your router via Ethernet. In other words, if you don't have an existing Sonos set-up and you buy the S5, it will need to be wired to your router. That said, any subsequent S5 or ZonePlayer you add can be connected wirelessly.

In my tests, I was impressed by the S5's overall audio performance. It covers the entire frequency range with grace and clarity. But you won't find deep bass here (the S5 is outfitted with a woofer only; there's no sub-woofer to cover the super-low frequencies). Also, a warning for audio purists: The S5 uses digital signal processing to ensure that you'll never hear distortion, regardless of volume. Sonos applies a "look-ahead" type of processing that can analyze peaks before they occur and react accordingly. Radio stations basically do the same thing to make sure, no matter what song they play, nothing distortsalthough the radio tends to use a very thick, noticeable compression ratio and the S5's processing is more subtle.

One of the benefits of not docking your iPhone or iPod, is that you can use it to do things other than simply play music. But if you're an active song-switcher and you haven't built up a song queue or playlist, you'll be launching the Sonos app often to control things. Fortunately, setting up the Sonos iPhone/touch app to work with the S5 is a dead-simple exercise, and almost every aspect of the app is intuitive. It also happens to be rather fastdisplaying album art for songs within a second or two of the song playing, if it takes even that long. It's not quite as fast or easy to operate as the $350 Sonos remote, but it's a very well designed app and it's a free download from Apple's App Store.

The closest Sonos competitor is probably Logitech's Squeezebox line of products. Just about everything in the Squeezebox line is more affordable, and some stand-outs, like the $300 Squeezebox Boom, offer quality audio performance and an included remote, but integration of music services like Rhapsody and Pandora is not nearly as seamless as on Sonos systems, and the remote controls can't compete with either the Sonos app or the dedicated Sonos controller.

For $400, you might expect more bass response, but the Sonos ZonePlayer S5 can get loud enough to power your next party, it just lacks the low-end rumble some listeners have come to expect from an iPod speaker system. And the absence of a dock is a bit bafflingsince it would have been an easy inclusion. Still, streaming your entire music librarywithout stuttering or buffering issuesis something no other iPod dock can do. Add in access to Rhapsody, Pandora, and Napster, and the price begins to seem a bit less inflated. Simply put, this is the cheapest way for current iPod touch and iPhone owners to enter the seamless world of home audio streaming that Sonos provides. I hope the introduction of the S5 means that there are even more affordable Sonos devices to come.

Sonos ZonePlayer S5

Bottom Line: The ZonePlayer S5 overcomes some of its deficiencies&mdash;like the lack of an iPod dock&mdash;and shines as a relatively affordable entry into the excellent, but expensive, Sonos wireless music streaming system.

Sonos ZonePlayer S5

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